It Should be Raining
by TdeAlba
Summary: Edited. Natalie's funeral. Future, obviously.


Disclaimer: I own nothing. Don't sue. You won't get anything out of it but student loan debt.

Author's note: I reread this a bit ago and decided it needed some editing.

* * *

It should be raining, he thought as he approached the group of people gathered on the lawn. It would make the ground soft, and Kayla would splatter mud on her tights, but it would make so much more sense. It just didn't seem right that the day should be so beautiful, considering the occasion. 

Viki sat in a chair by the graveside, her sons hovering around her. She looked flushed and tired and he wondered how her heart was holding up. How did any heart survive outliving two of your children? He tightened his hand on Kayla's shoulder; losing one child was enough to tear a person apart.

Roxy stood to one side, black mascara running down her cheeks. Rex, staring stoically into space, kept one arm protectively around her shoulder. He avoided John's gaze, but it wasn't personal, he was avoiding eye contact with everyone. John understood; he was just trying to keep his emotions under control. Sometime later, when everyone else was gone, Balsom would slip back into the cemetery to say his own good-bye to his sister, but he wasn't about to do it with an audience.

Kayla managed to catch his eye though; she always did. As she slipped out from underneath her father's hand and walked quickly to him, he bent down and wrapped his arms around her. "Hey kiddo," he said softly.

Jessica was the first of the Buchanans to notice John; she excused herself from her family and walked over to him. Shifting the baby to her other hip she put one arm around him in a half hug. "How are you holding up?" she asked.

"I'm okay," he said.

"And Kayla?"

John shrugged, "About as well as can be expected, I guess."

Jessica bit her lip. "They had time… Natalie did a great job of preparing her for this."

"Yeah," he said as if that somehow made things better. And maybe it did for Kayla and maybe it had for Natalie. She had prepared herself, she had prepared their daughter; nothing had prepared him.

"She had this all planned out, you know," she said, "The service, the flowers…"

"Kayla's dress…" he added.

"You think she planned this weather?" Jessica said looking up at the sky.

"Probably," he said, trying to smile.

"Yeah," she said, her eyes glistening, "she's probably up there in heaven, still planning and arranging."

"Running around like a force of nature trying to make all the angels to do what she wants."

Jessica smiled, but he could tell she was holding back tears. "She _was_ an angel."

"John," Bo said approaching them, "I thought I might see you at the wake last night."

John shook his head, "Natalie didn't want Kayla there, so I stayed back at the hotel with her." He didn't add that he was only too glad to escape it. The last thing he wanted to see was Natalie in her coffin. He didn't want to remember Natalie's corpse, he wanted to remember her alive. He wanted to remember the soft pink skin and long bright hair he had seen for the first time so many years ago, not that last day with her skin looking withered and the thin graying hair that had only barely grown back after she stopped the treatments. He wanted to remember her smile and her eyes flashing with fire, not her forehead wrinkling as she tried to hide the pain...

_"Kayla honey," she said running her fingers through her daughter's hair, "did daddy get your work from school?" Natalie was reclining on the living room sofa at Llanfair. She'd moved back in at her mother's insistence when she started chemo after the relapse. Rex, who had become a semi-permanent attachment at her side lately, sat in the armchair beside her, ready to run for anything his sister could think to want at a moment's notice._

_"As ordered," John said from the corner of the room where he was trying to be non-intrusive._

_"Why don't you go upstairs and make Uncle Rex help you with it, okay?" Natalie said._

_Kayla wrinkled her nose, "Uncle Rex isn't much help."_

_"Hey!" Rex protested._

_"Well take him with you anyway," Natalie said, "he might learn something."_

_"Come on, short stuff," Rex said standing up, "We can find where your grandmother keeps the chocolate while we're at it." As he led her out of the room Natalie relaxed back against the pillows squeezing her eyes shut._

_"If you need some rest I can-" John started._

_"Sit down, John," she said. "We need to talk."_

_They always did. And they always found excuses not to get to the issues they really needed to address._

_He sat down stiffly across from her. "I feel terrible doing this to you," she continued. He wondered if she remembered that was the same thing she said when she first started asking him to pick up Kayla so that she could go to mysterious doctor's appointments six years ago._

_"I didn't think it was your choice," he said trying not to let his voice crack._

_"That box there is for you," she said motioning to a plain cardboard box full of white envelopes. "Letters for Kayla. For birthdays, Christmas, graduation, I read somewhere you should do it. You know advice about growing up and stuff. They're for her eyes only, unless she shows them to you, okay?"_

_"Okay."_

_"They're labeled, and I think they're in order."_

_John looked at all the envelopes. All the years, all the milestones they both knew Natalie wouldn't be around for. He wondered if the pain would go away by the time the last envelope was opened. No, he decided, but the wound would be well scarred over by then._

_"Kevin set up a trust fund for Kayla with the money I had from my grandfathers. There's enough to pay for college and give her a pretty good start afterwards, but I don't think you should tell her about it till she gets to that point. I just think it's a bad idea to have a kid know she has all that money just waiting for her."_

_She was right. Of course. Kayla was the only thing they always agreed on. The only thing they managed to get right. If they could just keep talking about Kayla, they could keep ignoring all the things between them that they'd disagreed on. They could avoid facing all ways creative ways they'd found to hurt each other._

_"If you ever need help, you know, Jess and Mom and Kevin, you can go to any of them."_

_"Yeah," he said._

_"Rex too," she added, "I just think it's gonna take him a little longer to get over this. I don't think he's accepted it yet." Just like Natalie; she was the one dying, and she was worried about how it would affect her brother. Frustrated that she couldn't get him to see things her way._

_"Kayla's pretty crazy about him," John said. Kayla loved all her uncles and aunts, but Rex, perpetually twenty-five, was definitely the 'cool' one._

_"He's pretty crazy, so they're a good match." She paused as she seemed to search for what else she meant to say. "Okay, and John, you really can't be trusted to pick out her clothes," Natalie said looking at him sideways, "so I think you should get Jessica to take her shopping a couple times a year. If she can't do it you could probably ask Kelly or someone, just don't let Mom do it, she gets more frumpy everyday. And definitely don't let Roxy do it unless you want our daughter looking like a streetwalker."_

_"Not particularly," John said, trying to smile._

_"What am I forgetting?" Natalie said tapping her fingers. For all the world she sounded like any other mother leaving instructions for a baby sitter. If only he could believe that was the case and she was coming back at the end of the night, or weekend at most. "Oh, when she starts dating-"_

_"Oh Kayla's never dating," John interjected._

_"John!" she said and laughed. And for a moment he shut his eyes and forgot she was sick. Her laugh was still the same. He just pretended she was young and well and that they still had a chance. "I'm serious! Now you're not going to approve of any guy she brings home, but just remember that if you forbid her to see him outright she'll just sneak out when you're not looking."_

_"That sounds like someone I know," he said reaching out for her hand._

_"Exactly. But I'm not saying you should let her run around with some sleezeball either. You just might want to get a second opinion from a more impartial observer before you pass judgment."_

_"Will do," he said._

_And so they continued planning each decision for the rest of their daughter's life. It wasn't until that night, as he was leaving for the hotel that he remembered all the things between them that he'd meant for them to talk about. He resolved that tomorrow he would find the time. Tomorrow they would settle all the pain and secrets that had always been between them._

_And then around 3am, Jessica called._

_The phone call he had worried over since she told him she was sick. The one he had dreaded since she told him Kayla should move in with him last year "because it will make the transition easier." The one he had tried to plan for since she told him she was stopping the treatments "because they aren't helping and I don't want to leave a swollen bald corpse behind." The one Michael had warned him was coming when he called and said they needed to get back to Llanview..._

John followed Jessica's suddenly nervous glance towards the parking lot and saw Cristian Vega approaching with his mother. Cristian saw him and nodded. He expected to feel anger or resentment, but he didn't. Cristian knew more than anyone else what he was feeling, and he felt a sudden kinship with him. Funny, he thought, for so many years he had seen Crisitan as the one obstacle he and Natalie could never overcome. Just as he had spent so much time making sure Natalie didn't die at the hands of some psycho. But it wasn't some psycho that had killed her and it wasn't Cristian Vega who had separated them forever. It was just a perfectly mundane disease, not something he had ever planned a defense against. He thought how much he would prefer Natalie in the arms of Cristian Vega than in that mahogany casket.

A hand on his shoulder brought him out of his reverie; it was Kevin Buchanan. "John," he said gazing at Kayla who had gone to stand beside her grandmother, "If you or Kayla need anything, I want you to know you can call anytime."

"Thanks," he said, jamming his hands into his pockets, "it means a lot." He wished people would stop treating him like a grieving widower. Their marriage had ended eight years ago; he didn't have any right to that status.

"She's a good kid. You guys have done a great job with her," Kevin continued, "especially considering the circumstances."

Considering the circumstances. Had they really? He had offered to move back to Llanview when Kayla moved in with him, but Natalie said it wasn't necessary. They wouldn't be very far, as long as he brought her to visit every weekend… But maybe he should have insisted--made sure Kayla had more time with her mother. Or maybe she had seen too much of hospitals and sickness.

What was the best way for an eleven year old to watch her mother die?

No, Natalie had arranged it all perfectly. Kayla was the one thing they had done right. It was themselves they couldn't work out. She had confronted cancer and death head on, but they had put each other off for the better part of a decade. He was always going to get around to it. Later… as soon as she got better… when they had a chance to talk… one day when she wasn't so tired…

"She loved you to the end you know," a voice said suddenly from behind him. He turned to see Rex; he was scowling slightly but there was a hint of compassion in his eyes. Compassion he didn't deserve. He wished someone would just tell him he was a jerk; yell at him, slap him, something.

He heard the chink of a shovel as a tear slipped out of the corner of his eye.

It should be raining.


End file.
